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Global warming is 'real' and temperatures have climbed steadily over the past decades, a long-awaited, independent study has found, refuting skeptics’ claims that there isn’t enough evidence to assert that the world climate is changing. According to a study published yesterday (20 October) by the Berkley Earth Project, which included U.S. physicists, climatologists and statisticians, the average world land temperatures climbed approximately 1 degree Celsius since the mid-1950s. The Berkley project, funded among others by the Koch Foundation, linked to the company which Greenpeace called a ‘kingpin of climate science denial,’ has analysed data from 15 different sources, in some...

Tens of thousands of passengers in Australia and New Zealand were stranded when airlines suspended flights Sunday as an ash cloud from an erupting volcano in southern Chile spread, threatening to damage engines. Australia's national carrier, Qantas Airways, said all the airline's flights in and out of the southeastern city of Melbourne would be grounded. Other carriers including Virgin Australia and discount airlines Jetstar and Tiger similarly suspended flights. Up to 30,000 passengers in New Zealand and Australia found themselves stuck, according to airlines' estimates. Sunday afternoon, frustrated travelers lined up in airports and looked for last-minute accommodation. Hotels near...

Amazing New Eruption Pics! We took a ride... 18.4.2010 Words by Haukur S Magnússon Grapevine's dedicated team of eruption enthusiasts just returned from alengthy sojourn down to the explosive area down south. Some high-levelconnections enabled them to travel closer to the action than most - andthey shot many, many photos. We will be posting more visual documentation (hopefully some video, too), as well as a story of the trip later today, but for now you should feast on these awesome pics by Grapevine staff photographer Julia Staples. "The ash cloud looms" "This just looks really weird and crazy right...

Yes, I know I missed the last week of the year; I've been busy and still trying to catch up and dig out. Meanwhile, there were eruptions, including one of the best "curtains of fire" I've seen since Eldfell. Curtain of fire on Nyamuragira: From here: chitravini's photostream (go to page 2) Lava flow on the side of Piton de la Fournaise's main crater: From here: Paysages de la Reunion And finally, the lava pit inside Halemaumau (Kilauea, Hawaii), has been putting on a great show over the past few days: (click for full-size) Link to Webcam page

University of Alberta scientists contend they have the answer to mass extinction of animals and plants 93 million years ago. The answer, research has uncovered, has been found at the bottom of the sea floor where lava fountains erupted, altering the chemistry of the sea and possibly of the atmosphere.Undersea volcanic activity triggered a mass extinction of marine life and buried a thick mat of organic matter on the sea floor about 93 million years ago, which became a major source of oil, according to a new study. "It certainly caused an extinction of several species in the marine environment,"...

Melting ice caps may trigger more volcanic eruptions 10:38 03 April 2008 NewScientist.com news service Catherine Brahic Vatnajökull in the south-east is the largest ice cap in Iceland and conceals several volcanoes (Image: NASA) A warmer world could be a more explosive one. Global warming is having a much more profound effect than just melting ice caps – it is melting magma too. Vatnajökull is the largest ice cap in Iceland, and is disappearing at a rate of 5 cubic kilometres per year. Carolina Pagli of the University of Leeds, UK, and Freysteinn Sigmundsson of the University of Iceland have...

Dick Morris just made a pretty darn good point IMHO, on Hannity and Combes (Fox News): Hillary Rodham is the person, who personally coordinated the "Bimbo Eruptions" investigations and smears of women, who her husband cheated on her with, during his terms. Not to stop his cheating. Not to ... divorce him. Not even, to discover the truth. Why?... to smear and silence... the women. Should she, be in charge of the FBI? The IRS? The NSA?...

LOS ANGELES - Mars' southern polar ice cap is believed to erupt in a violent fit of heated gas every spring in a process that helps explain why the Red Planet has dark spots in that region, scientists said Wednesday. Jets of carbon dioxide gas burst from the ice cap as it warms every spring, carrying dark sand and dust that fall back to the surface as dark splotches, concluded Phil Christensen of Arizona State University, who analyzed images from NASA's Odyssey orbiter. "If you were there, you'd be standing on a slab of carbon dioxide ice," he said in...

Imagine the surface of Earth as a giant trampoline that accumulated a slab of ice over the winter, and you can get a sense of what a growing number of scientists say is in store for the planet as glaciers keep melting. Once the trampoline's ice turns to water that drips over the edges in the warm days of spring, the concave elastic slowly rebounds to its original flat shape. That's how Earth responds as glaciers retreat, and the consequences promise to be ... interesting. The reason is that one cubic meter of ice weighs just over a ton, and...

Think Pompeii got hit hard? Worse eruptions lurk By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent Mon Mar 6, 5:03 PM ET WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The preserved footprints and abandoned homes of villagers who fled a giant eruption of Mount Vesuvius 3,800 years ago show the volcano could destroy modern-day Naples with little warning, Italian and U.S. researchers reported on Monday. The eruption buried entire villages as far as 15 miles (25 kilometres) from the volcano, cooking people as they tried to escape and dumping several feet (metres) of ash and mud. New excavations show far more extensive damage than that...

Ocean temperatures might have risen even higher during the last century if it weren't for volcanoes that spewed ashes and aerosols into the upper atmosphere, researchers have found. The eruptions also offset a large percentage of sea level rise caused by human activity. Using 12 new state-of-the-art climate models, the researchers found that ocean warming and sea level rise in the 20th century were substantially reduced by the 1883 eruption of the Krakatoa volcano in Indonesia. Volcanic aerosols blocked sunlight and caused the ocean surface to cool. "That cooling penetrated into deeper layers of the ocean, where it remained for...

Week of Nov. 5, 2005; Vol. 168, No. 19 , p. 294 Volcanic Suppression: Major eruptions can reduce sea level Sid Perkins Large volcanic eruptions can temporarily cool Earth's climate and, a team of scientists now suggests, lower sea level worldwide. BLOWING ITS TOP. Ocean cooling following the June 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines caused sea level worldwide to temporarily drop about 5 millimeters. D. Harlow/U.S. Geological Survey The tiny particles of broken rock and droplets of condensed gases that a volcano ejects high into the atmosphere reflect sunlight into space. So, after an eruption, there's less...

Explore one of the most dangerous and enigmatic forces on earth, tsunamis. See the science behind their devastating power. Understand where they come from and what we can do to better prepare. It's not if it will happen again, but when.

Can't resist another Etna picture for this week: which is taken from the page below, which also has some new large-format QT movies: Skylights and lava falls in Valle del Bove Colima in Mexico got hot yesterday: the link below has some low-resolution Webcam animations: Observatorio Vulcanológico de la Universidad de Colima and finally, in an ancient volcano mode, this Earth Observatory image was an Ikonos view of Hanauma Bay on Oahu: Hanauma Bay, Oahu, Hawaii

SEATTLE — Seismologists in Washington State are on alert as earthquakes rock Mount St. Helens. Plus, the rumbling of the world's largest volcano, Mauna Loa in Hawaii, shows no signs of stopping. Are these two volcanoes ready to erupt? Mount St. Helens is just one volcanic hot spot and scientist are working hard to predict when or if there will be an eruption soon. The Washington State volcano erupted in 1980. A good portion of the mountain was literally blown to pieces creating devastation in its path. On Monday small earthquakes rattled Mount St. Helens at the rate of one...

Link post: please go to the link below to see the pictures and links, and post any comment/discussion there: Geology Picture of the Week, September 5-11, 2004: Etna Lava, Fournaise Bonus

Our first feature is the image of the Etna eruption. As of September 10, the eruption is continuing with a new effusive site opening. The lava flows are near the summit and aren't threatening any structures or villages. Click the picture to see it full-size. For more, click the article link at top and choose "Septembre 2004" at left. Our second feature is at the link below; six QTVR panoramas of the just-ended Piton de la Fournaise eruption. Stunning! If you have the bandwidth to handle it, look at the big ones. The aerial view is mind-boggling (though grainy in...

“In 1990 they found that the Earth goes through abrupt temperature changes from deep ice samples in Greenland of about 10,000 years ago the Earth’s temperature dropped 19 degrees” (research found by weather channel) taking 5-10 years (weather channel) but from analytical data, I intend to show this could take for the most part one year (Robert T Bailey) and more shocking a large part of the temperature change will happen this year! The End of the World as we known it is coming; an ice Age will change the face of the Earth. We have a crisis here. In...

Source: National Science Foundation Date: 2003-11-20 Volcanic Eruptions May Affect El Niño Onset A new study by scientists at the University of Virginia (UVa) in Charlottesville and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, suggests that explosive volcanic eruptions in the tropics may increase the probability of an El Niño event occurring during the winter following the eruption. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). "The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the dominant mode of interannual climate variability on the planet," says NCAR scientist Caspar Ammann. "When thinking about long-term climate, we must ask...

Yellowstone Hotspot Dominates North America With 142 Massive Eruptions The hotspot which powers the geysers and hot springs of Yellowstone has produced over 142 massive volcanic eruptions during the past 16.5 million years -- far more than the 100 previously known blasts, University of Utah geologists found. The cataclysmic explosions -- known as "caldera eruptions" -- typically generated 250 to 600 times as much volcanic ash as the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington state, and some were up to 2,500 times larger, covering as much as half the continental United States with inches to feet of...